After the CDC issued its controversial new guidelines in May announcing that vaccinated people could go without masks in most indoor and outdoor spaces, many local health departments and businesses loosened their mask mandates in turn.
But with COVID cases on the rise, the Delta variant making its way to the U.S., and schools reopening soon, many places are asking everyone to mask up again—and college campuses are leading the trend.
For today’s show, WORT news reporter Nora-Kathleen Berryhill spends the hour diving into campus mask mandates: where the political fault lines are, how local and state governments are getting involved, and what college administrations are doing to protect students and help minimize spread of the virus.
For the first half, she speaks with Elizabeth Redden from Inside Higher Ed about how colleges around the country have responded to COVID. Then, Hope Karnopp, state capitol reporter with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, gives us the scoop on how this is all playing out at UW–Madison and what to expect this fall.
Elizabeth Redden is an education reporter at Inside Higher Ed, where she’s been covering the impact of the pandemic on colleges and universities.
Hope Karnopp is state capital reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and podcast director at the Daily Cardinal. She hosts the Cardinal Call podcast feature on WORT.
Cover photo by Kojo Kwarteng on Unsplash
